They're going to kill me. It's only a matter of time.

I am a victim of the Canned Hunting industry. 

Look at me...Remember my face.

My beautiful mother was forced to breed many times in her life, so she could produce as many litters of cubs like me as possible. I was taken away from her when I was only a few days old....I cannot imagine her grief losing me, as I can only remember mine.

I got sick, I was stressed because of losing my mother, I was not fed properly, I lost some of my hair, and no one cared, Not even the tourists who came to see me, because if they knew the "truth" they would not have paid to hold me, to never let me have peace. All they wanted to do was hold me. I needed my mother, not them.

My life will consist of being patted, mauled, forced to be held, while camera flashes go off in my face over and over again, and when the next day comes, it starts all over like the day before and the day before that, and the day before that.

When I start to grow, and get too big to be cuddled, I will then be put on a leash and walked by tourists who come to places like where I am, who are told that I am a part of a breeding conservation facility. I wish I could yell out the Truth!!!!

The truth is this. I was born for one reason and one reason only. I was born to be killed. I was "Bred for the Bullet." I was born suffering and I will die suffering when I am full grown and killed by a "Canned Hunter."

I will not know he is a hunter. I will not know that what he holds in his hands will cause me to bleed and suffer until my life ends. I will not know he is to be feared because I have been hand reared all my life, so humans do not scare me.

I will more than likely see that bullet coming at me....Until it strikes....Me.

That is my life. Please tell the world about me.

Tell the world about us who are bred to die. Bred for the Bullet.

Please tell the world about the industry that I was born into, "The Canned Hunting Industry." 

There is nothing cute about petting me. You are simply helping me be killed.  Please always remember this, no matter how cute I look, I suffer inside and I need you to tell the world about me and what they are doing to all of us.

Thank you for being our Voice.

Dawn Warren Flann is a wildlife advocate supporting Blood Lions Tweet Storms for TV premiers and screenings worldwide.

Be another voice for the Blood Lions. Join the Tweet Storm to save them at 

https://sites.google.com/site/watchbloodlionseu/

I've got my marching orders

I love animals, I always have and it saddens me that three of my four favorite animals in the wild are under threat of extinction because of human activity. One of them, the polar bear, isn't getting much attention this week. It will have have to wait in the wings while elephants, lions and rhinos, which are under a more immediate threat, take center stage as people in 137 locations around the world march to bring attention to the dire situation that is taking place in Africa.

It's unbelievable to think that African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at the rate of one every 15 minutes. Add that up. I can hardly wrap my head around such numbers. Rhinos are being slaughtered for their horns at the rate of about one every 7 to 11 hours. The poor lion, once king of the jungle, has been reduced to a caged animal bred for hunting. Accustomed to having humans feeding him, the caged lion doesn't stand a chance when he's let out of confinement to walk a few yards only to be shot to death by a sports hunter.

You're thinking this is awful, aren't you? It's more than awful because the only reason the elephants and rhinos are being illegally poached is because a lot of people like ivory and others erroneously believe rhino horn has medicinal properties. The lions are under threat because there are people who actually enjoy killing lions for fun and they have the means to go to Africa and hunt them.

So what can we do? To begin with, we can help build awareness of the dire situation these animals are in. As Ekhart Tolle said, "Awareness is the greatest agent for change." If people don't know there is a problem, they can't do anything to solve it. Most people who buy ivory aren't thinking that an elephant has to be killed in order to get the tusks from which the trinket they're buying was made. Those who buy rhino horn for its so-called medicinal properties are most likely unaware that the horns are cut out of the rhino's heads leaving them to bleed to death. Most Americans don't know that the United States is the second largest importer of illegal ivory in the world. I didn't know that about the U.S. Did you?

I'm joining thousands of other wildlife advocates this weekend for the Global March for Elephants, Lions and Rhinos. I'll be marching in Gainesville, Florida, a university town with a population of 124,000 that's about 25 miles from my house. I'm proud that little Gainesville has joined the march. It may not turn out to be as large as some of the huge ones that are being planned, but that's not the point. The point is Gainesville folks will be showing up to add their voices to the outcry against an atrocity nobody who cares about animals can tolerate.

Even if you're unable to join the march this weekend, you can join those speaking out against wildlife crime by sharing this post, joining the Global March For Elephants and Rhinos community on Facebook and retweeting from their hashtag stream #GMFER. I'll be tweeting too, so you can also retweet me from @jpLANEauthor. Let's pool our social media resources and put a stop to the killing. We have the voice. We have the power. Now we just need to unleash it and help save the elephants, lions and rhinos of Africa before it's too late.

Thanks very much for your much appreciated comments. For some reason I'm not able to reply to them at the moment. I will as soon as I've sorted out this glitch.